Dragging Canoe

Dragging Canoe (1738-29 February 1792) was the war chief of the Chickamauga Cherokee from 1777 to 1792, preceding Young Tassel.

Biography
Dragging Canoe was born in 1738, the son of Chief Little Carpenter of the Chickamauga Cherokee tribe. He gained his nickname when his father told him that he could only fight in a war party against the Shawnee if he could carry his canoe, but it was too heavy for him to carry; he dragged it instead. His first battle occurred during the Anglo-Cherokee War of 1759-1761, and he would become a war chief by the 1770s, when he fought as an ally of Great Britain and the Tories against the United States from 1776 to 1777. When the Cherokee decided to make peace with the colonists, Dragging Canoe led a militant band, the "Chickamauga Cherokee", to continue the fight against the patriots on the frontier. Dragging Canoe even raided Kentucky and Virginia during the American Revolutionary War. In 1792, he achieved an alliance with the Muskogee and Choctaw, and he died of a heart attack at Running Water Town after dancing all night to celebrate the alliances.